Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction: 1980–2018
- The Cambridge Companion to
- The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction: 1980–2018
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Chronology
- Introduction: Framing the Present
- Part I Overview
- Part II New Formations
- Part III Genres and Movements
- 7 Late Modernism, Postmodernism and After
- 8 Experiment and the Genre Novel
- 9 Transgression and Experimentation
- 10 Fiction and Film, 1980–2018
- Part IV Contexts
- Conclusion
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to …
10 - Fiction and Film, 1980–2018
from Part III - Genres and Movements
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 June 2019
- The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction: 1980–2018
- The Cambridge Companion to
- The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction: 1980–2018
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Chronology
- Introduction: Framing the Present
- Part I Overview
- Part II New Formations
- Part III Genres and Movements
- 7 Late Modernism, Postmodernism and After
- 8 Experiment and the Genre Novel
- 9 Transgression and Experimentation
- 10 Fiction and Film, 1980–2018
- Part IV Contexts
- Conclusion
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to …
Summary
The most common interpretation of the conjunction ‘and’ in the phrase ‘fiction and film’ is to silently convert it into a preposition; to think of adaptation of novels and short stories into film and TV. Given how many books have served as source texts for visual media, this is hardly surprising. The Russian director Sergei Eisenstein also noted that many of the narrative strategies of nineteenth-century popular novelists had inspired innovative directors such as D. W. Griffith or King Vidor in their development of cinematic techniques such as the close-up, the dissolve, the superimposed shot or montage. In turn, modernist writers learnt from cinematography: think of the scene from Mrs Dalloway (1925) in which the point of view shifts back and forth between the advertising slogan being puffed into the sky by an aeroplane and different individuals on the ground: this is classic intercutting.
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- The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction: 1980–2018 , pp. 185 - 198Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019